The spread of healthcare acquired infections also known as HAI's has been an ever increasing challenge in health care facilities. HAI's include the transmission of bacteria, viruses and other disease-causing micro-organisms from various sources such as a patient or environmental surfaces to another patient or surface via the hands of healthcare workers which results in an infection of a patient that was previously not infected. These problems have been more apparent in recent years with the SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) outbreak and the influenza A virus H1N1 pandemic. As well, health care facilities have battled MRSA (methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus) and VRSA (vancomycin-resistant staphylococcus aureus) and other drug resistant micro-organisms for many years. Accordingly, there is a need to ensure that health care professionals comply with hand hygiene best practices. Hand hygiene can be accomplished using liquids such as a sanitizing product which does not require water for rinsing off or alternatively it can be accomplished using a soap and water.
As well there are other types of liquids that can be dispensed such as sun screen. The use of the sun screen may need a similar system and method of monitoring, tracking and reporting. For example such a method could be very important in schools in Australia where the incidences of skin cancer are very high.
A need exists for a system and method to reliably monitor, track and report dispenser usage. Such a system should be low-cost, stable and reliable. ZigBee is a low-power, wireless network standard that may offer reliability. However, ZigBee requires network coordinators along with routers to establish the network. This additional level of hardware adds both complexity and cost to a system. Therefore, there is the need for a reliable routing protocol for a wireless network that is tailored to improving the stability for low data flow without the use of network coordinators.